Development of corrosion testing equipment to evaluate corrosion resistance in fuel dissolved solution (Contract research)

Motooka, Takafumi; Terakado, Shogo; Koya, Toshio ; Kiuchi, Kiyoshi

The safety for corrosion of various metals applied to spent fuel dissolvers has been evaluated by the mock-up tests using small scaled equipment and the reference tests in laboratories with small specimens. These tests have been conducted under un-radioactive environments. The environment in practical reprocessing plants has many radioactive species. Therefore, the effect of irradiation on corrosion should be evaluated in detail.In this study, the corrosion testing equipment employed to simulate environments in a dissolver has been developed. This report describes the specification of corrosion testing equipment and the results of primary and reference and hot tests.Corrosion test using the equipment under heat transfer and irradiation conditions have been carried out for 1000 hours in safety. As a result, it has been indicated that zirconium has excellent corrosion resistance in fuel dissolved solution. It is expectable that useful corrosion test data in radioactive environment are accumulated with this equipment in future.